


That's What Friends Are For

by ReidsFangirl18



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Ending, Alternate Season/Series 14, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bombshell - Freeform, Family, Friendship, Loss, Male-Female Friendship, Other, Past Relationship(s), Reid/JJ Friendship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-10-24 09:26:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 11,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17701745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReidsFangirl18/pseuds/ReidsFangirl18
Summary: Reid arrives at the BAU to find a surprise waiting for him. He's about to become a father in the most unexpected way. The road ahead will not be easy, but luckily he's not walking this one alone. With his best friend at his side and his entire BAU family behind him, Reid will accept the most wonderful gift and greatest responsibility that's ever been thrust upon him, fatherhood.





	1. Bombshell

**Author's Note:**

  * For [IllegalCerebral](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IllegalCerebral/gifts), [analyn100](https://archiveofourown.org/users/analyn100/gifts).



Chapter 1: Bombshell

 

JJ: _“You were born not from my flesh, but from my heart, you were longed for, and wanted, and loved from the start.” - Unknown_

 

 

 

When Reid stepped off the elevator and entered the BAU through the glass doors, he never expected how much his life would change that day. He did, however, notice that JJ seemed to be eyeing him with a strange look on her face. She smiled at him, but there were tears in her eyes and her hands shook as she poured her coffee. Had something happened?  Reid immediately went over to talk to her.

 

“Morning Spence.” She said when she saw him.

 

“JJ, is everything alright?” He asked.

 

_Is everything alright?_ JJ didn’t know how to answer that. There was a lot of good and a lot of bad in the bombshell that had just been dropped on them, on _him._ So no, everything was not alright, but it wasn’t all bad either. She knew he’d asked because of the look that must have been on her face when he’d walked in. He had no idea. He was worried about her, which, at that moment, was just bizarre.

           

“I’m fine Spence.” She assured him.

 

“JJ, something is obviously going on, what is it?”

 

“It’s complicated, we can talk about it later. Emily was looking for you, she’s in her office.” She replied.

 

“O-K…” He said, still analyzing her facial expressions as he headed up the stairs to Emily’s office.

 

When he got there, Emily was sitting at her desk. She appeared to be reading a casefile, perhaps their next, but he could tell that she wasn’t focused on the file’s contents. She was only reading it to make it look like she wasn’t just sitting there waiting for him. At this point, between her and JJ, he had a sinking feeling that his life was about to be turned upside down again. This feeling only worsened when he realized they weren’t alone. There was another woman, one he didn’t remember ever seeing before. She was sitting on the small loveseat in Emily’s office, which had been relocated from its usual place across from her desk to backed up against the window, directly across from where Reid was standing. The woman wore a red sweater, a long floral skirt, and a long necklace made up of large red and pink beads, she had short, pixie-cut brown hair. Something about this woman told Reid she was here in some kind of official capacity and that had him unnerved, so he kept his focus on Emily.

 

“JJ said you wanted to see me?” He asked.

 

“Spencer, good morning, go ahead and have a seat.” She said as she stood up and closed the door.

 

He obeyed. Despite himself, he looked from Emily to their guest and back with nervous curiosity.  

 

“What’s going on Emily?” He asked.

 

“We need to talk.” She replied. “Spencer, this is Carolyn Frankfort, she’s with social services in Las Vegas Nevada. She came here to talk specifically to you. Did you ever know a woman named Rebecca Thompson?” Emily asked.

 

“Yeah, she’s a couple of years younger than me. She grew up living in an apartment above her family’s restaurant. We grew up together, outside of you guys she’s one of the best friends I’ve ever had.” He explained.

 

“When was the last time you spoke with her?” Ms. Frankfort asked, speaking up for the first time.

 

“Last week, last Sunday at ten-thirty PM to be exact. I haven’t seen her in a little over three years, not since I went down to Las Vegas to get the rest of my mom’s things. Why? What happened? Why is social services involved in this?”

 

“There really is no good way to say this. She died, a week ago.” She began, pausing to give him a moment to process this.

 

Reid was aghast. How could one of his oldest and most treasured friends suddenly be gone? He had to know everything. “Go on…” he said, nodding as if to reassure her that whatever came next, he could take it.

 

"She was discovered on the steps of All Saints Orthodox Church just after midnight a week ago today. The priest there was leaving when he discovered a newborn wrapped in a blanket and left on the floor of the narthex. He picked up the child and opened the door to see if the mother might still be in the area. That’s when he saw a woman in her mid-thirties with black hair laying on the steps leading up to the building. He set the child down on a chair and tried to resuscitate her but, it was already too late. He called the police, who called us and that’s when I became the little girl’s case manager. As I’m sure you’re aware when the in-state search fails to identify a suitable guardian a child would normally be put into the foster system. However, it appears Miss Thompson took great pains to ensure that didn’t happen in this instance."

 

“You didn’t find anyone?” Emily asked, she’d been silent up to now but the horror of what she was hearing had made her speak up.

 

Reid shook his head. “I’m not surprised. Becca’s only other family are her parents, and social services would never place a baby with them. Her mom is severely mentally ill, she’s volatile and abusive. When we were kids, Becca would quite often have cuts and bruises all over her. She tried to hide them with long clothes and dark makeup, but it didn’t always work. By the time she was ten, CPS started to take notice. She was almost removed from her parents’ custody three separate times, but each time her dad covered for his wife and talked their way out of it.”

 

“He’s right, which is why even though she is their grandchild we can’t place her with them. Fortunately, Miss Thompson left us other instructions. There was a handwritten letter placed inside the blanket she was wrapped in. You can read the whole thing for yourself but essentially it states that she knew she was dying and rather than let her daughter be raised either by her parents or complete strangers, she’d like you to raise her. She told us who you are and where we could find you. Now, normally the odds would favor the grandparents in a case like this but, taking into account that they are, in our own estimation, unfit, and the mother’s wishes you do have a legitimate claim to custody of this little girl.”

 

For a moment, Reid just sat there, unable to find the right words to sum up what he was feeling, the thoughts racing through his mind.

 

“Of course, there’s a lot to work out if you do decide to adopt her, and the final decision would be up to the courts but…I leave to return to Nevada in three hours. If you agree to take her, I’ll get things started and figure out exactly what the next step is as soon as I get there.”

 

“I’m doing it.” He said, cutting her off mid-sentence.

 

“Reid? You don’t have to decide right this second.” Emily reminded him.

 

“I’m taking her Emily. I’ve already made up my mind. It’s what Becca wanted. I owe it to her to make sure her daughter is safe and her last wishes are honored. Which means it looks like I have to go back to Vegas.”

 

Emily nodded. “Ok, I’ll get Garcia to get you on the next available flight.” She said.

 

“I need to get going as well or I’ll miss my flight…”

 

“I’ll walk you out as far as the elevator.” Emily replied, turning to Reid she said: “Wait here, I’ll be back.”

 

He nodded as they left the room. Reid didn’t understand any of this. Becca had only been thirty-four years old. The last time he’d heard from her, she’d seemed fine. She’d never told him that there was anything wrong, or that she was pregnant. He didn’t know what to think. He needed answers, answers only a trip to Las Vegas would answer.

 

***

 

Ten minutes later, Emily walked into Garcia’s office.

 

“Morning Garcia…”

 

“Morning. Do we have a case? Or did you just come to say ‘hi’?”

 

“Neither. Actually, I need something else, two tickets on the next available commercial flight from here to Las Vegas.”

 

“You got it, you got it,” Garcia replied, pulling up the website for every major airline. “What’s this about?”

 

“It’s a long story. Apparently, an old friend of Reid’s suddenly died roughly a week ago, he had no idea until this morning. It turns out that the last thing she did was abandon her newborn daughter in a church with a note pinned to her blanket asking Reid to raise her.”

 

“OMG, Em… please tell me you’re kidding.” Garcia asked as she sat there multitasking.

 

“I wish, and to make matters worse, the only reason the friend hasn’t been buried yet is that the ME hasn’t pinned down the cause of death.”

 

“What about the baby?”

 

“Reid’s determined to adopt her. That’s why he’s going to Vegas, to start that process.”

 

“Is he ok?”

 

“I don’t know. He seems pretty calm all things considered, certainly calmer than I would be in his shoes right now, but we all know that sometimes that’s just how Reid is when he’s so freaked out he has to compartmentalize in order to function. That’s why I’m sending JJ to go with him.”


	2. A Thousand Questions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While the rest of the BAU team begins their next case, Reid and JJ make their way to Las Vegas. On the way there, Reid thinks back on his last memories of Rebecca while she was alive, and wonders what could have changed in the years since he last saw her, who her child's biological father is, and why she would prefer Spencer be her guardian than whoever that is.

Chapter 2: A Thousand Questions

 

A new case came in a few hours after Reid and JJ left for the airport. As Matt, Tara, Alvez, and Rossi filed into the conference room they couldn’t help but notice that two of their teammates were conspicuously missing.

 

“Ok, now that everybody’s here, let’s get started,” Emily said.

 

“Wait a minute, we’re not all here.” Tara pointed out.

 

“Yeah, she’s right.” Matt agreed. “Where are Reid and JJ?”

 

“They won’t be joining us. Reid was just notified of the death of an old friend, also the fact that this friend gave birth shortly before her death. It’s a long story and I promise I’ll explain everything to you guys later but right now, we need to get started.”

 

“First the fiasco a few years ago, then he was abducted and almost sacrificed by a cult, now this…” Tata said.

 

“Yeah… that’s why I sent JJ with him. I didn’t think it was a good idea for him to go alone. That’s said, it’s important that the rest of us hold down the fort while they’re gone, so let’s get started.”

 

Sensing that was her cue, Garcia grabbed the remote, stood, and began the briefing.

 

“Alright my pretties, this time you’re jetting to Beatty Nevada. It’s a smaller city about two hours northwest of Las Vegas. In the last two weeks, three women, all with dark hair in their early twenties to mid-thirties, were found. They were all stripped naked, bound, strangled, severely beaten, and sexually assaulted. They were all dumped on side streets or in allies, basically lightly traveled public places. It’s still pretty early out there so the latest victim was only found a half hour ago.”

 

“And as soon as they were sure she was connected to the others, they called us,” Emily added.

 

“Right off the bat, it’s pretty obvious we’re looking for a male offender. Men get off on this kind of violence, women don’t.” Tara said.

 

“He could’ve chopped them up and/or buried them, even just dumped them in more isolated areas. It wouldn’t be hard in a city surrounded by desert, but he chose not to. It’s important to him that they’re found quickly, and in as compromising a state as possible. He’s getting off, not just on the violence, but on humiliating these women” Rossi theorized.

 

“And once and Unsub like this gets started, it only gets worse. Wheels up in twenty.”

 

***

 

Meanwhile, JJ and Reid were in the air, flying to Las Vegas. Reid was sitting by the window, JJ was in the seat to his right. She watched as he stared hopelessly out the window. JJ could only imagine what must be running through his mind.

 

“Spence, it’s gonna be ok.” She said.

 

“How JJ? How, when we don’t even know how Becca died?” He asked.

 

JJ couldn’t think of what to say, so she just looked at him, trying to appear reassuring. Finally, she asked: “How close were the two of you?”

 

“We were best friends, she was pretty much the best friend I ever had outside of our team. What I don’t understand is why she never told me she was in trouble you know? The social worker said that based on the letter, Becca knew she was dying, but I talked to her the night before. She seemed fine. She didn’t mention anything about being in trouble, or that she’d just had a baby. I had no idea she was even pregnant. Now all of a sudden, when it’s already too late to help her, she asks me to raise her daughter? None of this makes sense.”

 

“Well, I don’t know her, but I do know you. The fact that she chose you to adopt her baby, Spence, mothers, especially mothers of newborns, she’s trusting you with the one thing, the one person she loved more than life itself. She asked you to do this for her, for a reason. So I have to believe that whatever was going on, there’s a reason she didn’t want you to know but it wasn’t that she didn’t trust you.”

 

“I just… I need to know what happened, and I need to make sure that nothing happens to Becca’s daughter.” He replied

 

Just like that, his mind drifted back to the last time he’d seen her.

 

3 years earlier

 

 

_When Spencer walked into the dimly lit dining room of Thompson’s Grill, it looked empty at first. The sign on the door had said open but there didn’t seem to be anyone there._

_“Hello? Becca?” He called out._

_Suddenly, Becca popped out from beneath the bar. She was wearing a red tank top with a black, sleeveless leather vest over it. Her black hair was cut at shoulder-length and heavily layered, and her blue eyes were framed by thick black eyeliner. She had a glass in one hand, and a dishtowel in the other._

_“Well, if it isn’t one of my favorite people.” She said with a smile. She walked out from behind the bar and wrapped him in a tight embrace. “Where have you been? It’s been forever! We miss you around here…” she told him as she squeezed before letting him go._

_“Becca, I’m pretty sure you’re the only one who still lives here who actually misses me.” He replied._

_“Dude, if I’m your only friend, that’s just sad. I don’t say that to insult you, I mean if that’s true, then that just proves what I’ve thought for years, that ninety-five percent of the human race sucks.”_

_He chuckled. “You might be right about Las Vegas, but fortunately you’re far from my only friend.”_

_“Good. I was about to ask you whose butts I need to kick.” She said as she set the glass down on the counter with a thud. “So what brings you back to town anyway? Your mom?”_

_“Yeah, actually I’m in the process of moving her to a different facility. I came down to get the rest of her stuff. I thought I’d come say ‘hi’, before I left town.”_

_“Well, I’m glad you did, want something to eat?”_

_“Sure.”_

_“Let me guess, the usual?”_

_“How’d you know that?”_

_“Spencer, I’ve known you since I was four. You’ve ordered the exact same meal every single time you’ve come in here for the last twenty years. You, my friend, are a creature of habit if there ever was one. The only variation is whether you want a soda or something with alcohol.”_

_“How about water?” He asked._

_“Really? Are you changing things around just to disprove my theory?”_

_“…Maybe…”_

_She smiled. “Alright, coming right up, do want an orange slice?”_

_“Isn’t it usually lemon?”_

_“Not here. My house, my rules, and the first rule is…” she paused for dramatic effect, “weirdness is a good thing.”_

_He smiled. “Alright then. Yes, put an orange in it.”_

_“Way ahead of you.” She replied, filling a tall glass with ice water and getting an orange out of the cooler to her left. Before slicing it she turned to the kitchen door behind her, opened it a crack, and yelled into the kitchen. “Hey Pop, I need a turkey club with fries, extra sauce no cheese.” Then she finished what she was doing and handed Spencer his water._

_“So, how’s everything going?” He asked._

_“Great, I’m teaching graphic design as an adjunct professor at Alta. I only still moonlight here to help Pop out, since Mama can’t.”_

_“That’s great!” he exclaimed. “I know you loved it when you were a student there.”_

_“I did indeed.” She said. “Don’t think I don’t know the real reason you’re asking Spencer. It’s better now that I have my own place. I’m only here about twenty hours a week, almost all of which is spent down here and not up in our old apartment so, I hardly ever see her these days.”_

_“You just told me that things are great, but you just said that like it’s a bad thing.” He pointed out._

_She sighed. “I guess, if I’m honest with myself, I kinda feel guilty about how much happier I am not being here as much.”_

 

Present Day

 

“Spence? You ok?” JJ asked, drawing him back to the present.

 

“Y-heah, I’m fine. W-why do you ask?”

 

“You’ve been staring into space for the last half hour like you were somewhere else. What were you thinking about?”

 

“The last time I saw her. It was when I was moving my mom from Bennington to Houston. I went to look for her at her family’s restaurant. Even after she graduated from college, she still worked there part time helping her dad out. She was there, we talked, I had dinner. She seemed fine, happier than I’d ever seen her. Actually, it was like the life she wanted was finally coming together. Now I’m just wondering what changed.” He said, glancing over to meet JJ’s eye.

 

She knew that look. Help me understand.

 

“What do you mean?” She asked.

 

“I mean, she’s fine, her career’s finally headed where she’s always wanted it to go, she’s cut almost all ties with her abusive mother and then…this… Even with the letter, social services wouldn’t have even notified me about the baby if they knew who the father was, so she either didn’t know herself, or doesn’t want him in daughter’s her life for some reason. I’m guessing it’s the latter. Becca was… a little rough around the edges but sleeping with and getting pregnant by someone she didn’t know just doesn’t fit. Then she gives birth, immediately abandons her child, and dies suddenly of no apparent cause on the steps of a church? None of it makes any sense to me.”

 

“I asked Garcia to look into the last few years of your friend’s life so we can try to figure out what happened to her,” JJ told him. “We should have some answers by the time we land.”

 

“Thanks for coming with me JJ.” He said.

 

“Of course.”

 

“Really…I… I don’t know how I’d get through this without you…”

 

“I’m right here Spence. Whatever happens, I’m always on your side.”

 

“You’re the best.” He replied, smiling for the first time since hearing the news.

 

“So, you think she knew who the baby’s father is?” JJ asked.

 

“Yes. Which means there must be another reason why social service can’t find him, I don’t think she wanted whoever he is to know about the baby.”


	3. Becca's Daughter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Upon arriving in Las Vegas, Reid and JJ head to Social Services to figure out how Reid would go about adopting Becca's daughter.

Chapter 3: Becca’s Daughter

 

A few hours later, when they finally landed in Las Vegas and got to their hotel, the first thing they did was call Garcia from Reid’s room.

 

“Hey Pen, you’re on speaker. Did you find anything that might give us a clue about what happened to Rebecca Thompson?” JJ asked.

 

“Unfortunately, my pretties, what I found leads us to few answers and more questions. First of all, she did, in fact, teach part-time at the same Fine Arts school she attended in the early 2000s, but here’s where things get weird. Eight months ago she moved to a different apartment, in a different building, in another part of the city. Her most recent address was much further away from both the university and her parents’ restaurant. Then all of a sudden about six months ago she left the university, stopped working at the restaurant, and started living off her savings. It looks like she basically became a hermit, but she did some paintings of hers from an online gallery she created but she put all of that money in a savings account that seems to have been set up for that express purpose. Once the payments were deposited she never touched them.”

 

“Why would she move away and quit the job she loved?” Reid asked.

 

“I have no idea, unfortunately after that six-month mark, she doesn’t exactly leave a much of a paper trail. She made regular cash withdrawals roughly once a week, all from different ATMs. Most of those were two-hundred and fifty dollars each time but there were a few that were closer to three or four hundred. If you ask me, she started using cash to intentionally hide her tracks.”

 

“Well, we know she didn’t want anyone to know who the father of her child was, maybe she was afraid of him and went into hiding to protect herself just like…” JJ caught herself before she finished that sentence.

 

“Ok, something tells me that JJ might be on the right track, so I’m gonna go ahead and see if Rebecca filed a restraining order against anyone in the past year,” Garcia asked.

 

“Please do,” Reid asked.

 

“Thanks, Penn.”

 

“But of course, my loves,” Garcia replied before hanging up.

 

JJ watched as Reid paced around the room. “Spence…we will find out what happened to her. We’ll go to social services first and see what you have to do to take custody of Rebecca’s daughter, then we’ll see if the ME has finished the autopsy yet and if not we can go talk to her co-workers at the university. I promise you, we’ll dig as much as we have to, as deep as you want to take this. It won’t bring her back but it’s better than not knowing.”

 

“I know. JJ, I meant what I said on the plane. If you weren’t here I don’t know what I’d do right now. I’ve known Becca since we were little kids and even when I left Las Vegas we never lost contact, not even after all these years. I used to visit her every time I came home to see my mom. Becca was the type of person who always had a plan. Sometimes what she did only made sense to her but she never did anything randomly; it was like she had everything planned out and you were a step behind her trying to figure out what was going on in her head as you went along.”

 

“Sounds like that could get pretty frustrating.”

 

“It could be, but I learned a long time ago to just trust that she knew what she was doing. The difference here is this time she’s not around to fill me in, about her death, about the baby, about any of this.”

 

“Well, then let’s start with the breadcrumbs she left behind. We won’t learn anything pacing around a hotel room will we?”

 

***

At Social Services Ms. Frankfort was there waiting for them. As soon as she saw them arrive, she took Reid and JJ into her office. She sat down at her desk, Reid and JJ took their seats in the two chairs opposite her.

 

“This is my friend JJ.”

 

“It’s nice to meet you,” JJ added.

 

“Likewise.”

 

“So what’s my next move?” Reid asked impatiently.

 

“Ok, while I was waiting for you I did some research since the crossing of state lines means we have to account for the laws governing this process in two different states. Now, as I understand it, your ultimate goal is to formally adopt her, is that correct?” She asked.

 

“Yes,” Reid answered. “As soon as possible, I don’t want her to be in foster care any longer than necessary.”

 

“Well, in order to bring her home as quickly as possible, your best bet is to wait on formal adoption and instead focus on becoming her legal guardian right now. That’s a usually a quicker and less complicated process. Plus, it would give us a reason to transfer her case to CPS in DC, which would smooth the road to formal adoption quite a bit because the inter-state business and differing sets of laws would no longer be an issue.”

 

“And how long does that usually take?” JJ asked.

 

“Once the hearing actually takes place, not long at all, but there’s usually a two to three month waiting period between the initial filing of a petition for guardianship and that hearing taking place.”

 

“Three months?” Reid asked.

 

“However,” She continued, “there might be a way to expedite that.”

 

“How?”

 

“If it were an open and shut case, the judge might be persuaded to have the hearing sooner out of the best interests of the child. The letter than Miss Thompson left with her daughter goes a long way in that direction but it’s not the same thing as a legal document. The letter says that she was aware that she dying. If she knew she didn’t have a lot of time left, she might have made those arrangements in a more binding form.”

 

“You mean like a will?” Reid asked.

 

“That’s exactly what I mean. If she had one and it says the same thing that letter does, then the hearing becomes all but a formality as long as you pass the background check, which considering the FBI has higher standards for that than we do, there shouldn’t be any doubt about that going smoothly. Once you become her guardian, at that point you would be allowed to bring her home.”

 

“What’s her name?”

 

“She doesn’t have one yet. For babies who are found under circumstances like these, we file what’s called a foundling certificate. It’s like a birth certificate except the baby isn’t given a name. Then we go back once a legal guardian is established and amend their certificate with whatever name their adoptive guardians give them. That might be something to start thinking about. In the meantime, would you like to meet her?”

 

“C-can I?” He asked. “Is she here?”

 

Ms. Frankfort nodded. “Excuse me, I’ll just be a moment.” She replied before leaving the room.

 

Reid knew she couldn’t have been gone for long but to him, it felt like hours.

 

“This is it, Spence, you ready?” JJ asked.

 

He nodded.

 

When Ms. Frankfort came back in, she was cradling an infant wrapped in a pink, black, and white plaid fleece blanket. “Here she is.” She said, bringing her over to Reid and placing her gently in his arms.

 

He looked down at her and noticed that she already had a mop of thick, silky, black hair, then, after a few seconds, as though she was aware of his gaze, she opened her eyes and looked up at him. Her eyes were a bluish gray, more muted in color than her mother’s had been, but they were bright and alert. She smiled, and after freeing her arm, reached up. Reid met her halfway and gave her a finger to hand on to. “Hi, little one… my name’s Spencer, I was friends with your mommy. You’re safe now, I’m gonna take good care of you.”

 

“She’s a sweetheart,” Ms. Frankfort commented, “Since it was pretty obvious in her case who her guardian was going to be, I’ve been taking care of her, my own daughter was holding her just now. We estimate she’s about eight or nine days old, that blanket is the same one she was wrapped in when she was found. I tried to get her a new one, but she just cried non-stop.”

 

“But wouldn’t she be too little to recognize that specific blanket?” JJ asked.

 

“I don’t think it is the blanket itself, if this is the blanket Becca wrapped her in, then it might still have her scent on it as well as her own,” Reid explained. “That familiarity would make her feel secure.”

 

When he looked back down at the little girl, she was fast asleep.

 

“Awe” JJ exclaimed in a whisper.

 

“I’ve never seen her fall asleep like that in the arms of someone she just met, even as little as she is, it’s never happened. Looks like Miss Thompson made the right choice.”


	4. In Too Deep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reid and JJ talk to another friend of Becca's who sheds some troubling light on her final months of life.

Chapter 4: In Too Deep

 

Seeing Spence with Becca's daughter reminded JJ of the day almost six years earlier when he'd admitted to her that he wanted children. In order to give them a little bit of privacy, she stepped out of the room and called Garcia.

 

"Hey, how's Reid doing?"

 

JJ honestly didn't know how to answer that at the moment. "It's a lot to deal with. He just lost a friend and gained a child all in one day, but he'll be alright, we just need to be there for him. Speaking of which, did digging a little deeper into the past few years of Rebecca's life reveal anything?" She asked.

 

"Yes. As you know, because of all the cash withdrawals her finances didn't tell me a whole lot, but I did figure out what her new apartment building had that her old one didn't."

 

"Which was?"

 

"A bus stop. She didn't have a car, but she did have a bus pass, and there was a stop literally less than twenty feet from her front door. I can also confirm that she used her pass to take the bus from the stop outside her apartment to the church where she left the baby on the night that she died. In fact, the records of where and when that bus pass was used have actually revealed a lot. She also went to the local courthouse. I was originally looking into that because I was wondering if she had ever filed a restraining order against anyone, and indeed she did. A little over nine months ago she filed a restraining order against one Peter Bailman."

 

"Ex-Boyfriend?" JJ asked.

 

"I'm not sure but I doubt it, Mr. Bailman has a bunch of citations for bar fights, petty theft, sexual harassment charges, and she's not the first woman to file a restraining order against this sleazeball."

 

"Wow, yeah, the way Reid talks about her I doubt she'd date someone like that. Hey, there's actually one more thing we need to know Garcia."

 

"Name it."

 

"We need to know if Rebecca ever notarized a will. We still don't know how she died, but the letter she left with the baby suggests that she knew she was dying so it's possible that had time to make some formal arrangements before that happened. The baby's case manager thinks it would help speed up the process of Reid being granted guardianship if Rebecca made her wishes clear in a will of some kind."

 

"That might take me a minute since she wouldn't need to see a judge to do that but I'll get back to you," Garcia replied, and the call ended.

 

Spencer came out of Ms. Frankfort's office a few minutes later, looking like a child whose puppy had just been hit by a car. Even after fifteen minutes, he was clearly already attached.

 

"Was that Garcia?" He asked.

 

"Yeah, she dug a little deeper into Rebecca's life and it looks like she might have stumbled on something significant.

 

"Which was?"

 

"Does the name Peter Bailman ring a bell?"

 

"Yeah. He lived in our neighborhood growing up, why?"

 

"Garcia found a restraining order that Rebecca filed against him about nine months ago. Spence, is there any chance at all that he's the father?"

 

Reid shook his head 'no' before JJ even finished asking. "There's no way. Rebecca hated him. We both did. He was older than us, I actually graduated with him, and when he wasn't beating me up for the fun of it he was harassing her. Whenever Becca talked about him, which wasn't much, she'd call him a 'prick'. Believe me, there's a higher probability of an asteroid with a surface area the size of Texas hitting the earth in the next five minutes than Becca sleeping with Peter Bailman."

 

"Well, something must've happened between them around that time for her to take out that restraining order. I think we need to talk to her friends at the university." JJ suggested.

 

"Let's go."

 

As soon as they arrived on campus, they went to talk to the Dean of the Art Department, who told them that Becca's closest friend from work had been a woman named Amanda Chambers, who also taught the graphic design classes and they were most likely to find her eating lunch in her office.

 

When they got there they found Professor Chambers sitting on top of her desk spooning what looked like chocolate pudding from a plastic cup into her mouth. She was tiny, skinny and shorter than JJ with long blonde hair and large hazel eyes. When she saw them waiting outside her door she hopped off her desk to let them in.

 

"Hello?" She asked.

 

"Hi, I'm Spencer, this is my friend JJ, we would like to talk to you about Becca Thompson." He explained.

 

"You knew her too," She observed. "Most people who didn't know her usually used her full name. She'd answer to it but once you knew her it was Becca."

 

"I know, I've known her since we were kids." He replied.

 

"Oh, you're _that_ Spencer…" She replied with a wry smile. Reid noticed that her eyes darted up and to the side like she was remembering everything Becca had ever told her about him. "It's nice to finally meet the legend in person." She said as she jumped back onto her desk.

 

"We were hoping you could help us fill in some of the gaps in her last year of life, there's a lot about what happened to her that doesn't make sense to us." JJ cut in.

 

"I don't know a whole lot," Amanda warned. "I had my suspicions but she never came out and said anything so I don't know how much of it I was right about."

 

"What did you suspect?" Reid asked.

 

"Well, nine months ago, she called me early in the morning, like super early, I think it was around four AM. She said she was sick and asked if I could cover her classes for the day. I could tell something was wrong, but she didn't seem sick. It was more like she was shaken like something really bad had happened and it scared her. I agreed. When she came back to work the next day, she was limping and she had marks on her wrists, like rope burns and I'm positive I saw a matching mark on one of her ankles. I asked her what happened, and she just said that she didn't want to talk about it."

 

JJ turned to Reid. "Do you think maybe her mom hurt her again?"

 

He shook his head. "No, every time Becca's mom hurt her it was impulsive, this sounds like there was more planning to it than that, her mom wouldn't have taken the time to tie her up." He explained. Then he turned back to Amanda. "What happened next?"

 

I noticed over the next month or so that she started getting sick, there were days where she would throw up two or three times. Eventually, I asked her if she knew what was wrong and she said that nothing was, that she was pregnant." Amanda paused, as though gathering the resolve to tell them what else she knew. "I think, I think whoever hurt her that night raped her. I think that that's how she got pregnant."

 

Reid was incensed, he had to withdraw within himself to maintain the outward appearance of calm. If Amanda was correct, then the restraining order against Peter suddenly made sense as well. _No wonder she didn't want anyone to know who the father of her child is…_ He thought bitterly to himself. He hoped desperately that he never saw the likes of Peter Bailman again, because the next time he did, he wasn't sure what he'd be capable of.

 

"Is there more?" JJ asked, seeing the tears in Amanda's eyes and carotid artery pulsating in her neck that Reid had been too absorbed by his own thoughts to notice.

 

"Yes," she admitted. "It gets worse. About seven months ago, I started noticing that she was coming into work with bruises, and knowing her, and knowing what I know about her family I assumed it was because if her mom at first. But then one day she tripped over the laptop cart in her classroom, and within a couple of hours, she had a massive bruise on her leg. It went all the way from her knee to her ankle. I was worried about her so I made her go to the ER. They kept her for observation overnight and ran some blood tests. When she got back to work after that she claimed they didn't find anything wrong, but she kept bruising really easily and despite being pregnant she was losing weight instead of gaining it. Becca wasn't a small person, she just wasn't built that way but by the time she resigned, aside from her pregnancy starting to show, she was skin and bone. I still don't know what, but I'm positive there was something else wrong with her, something she didn't want anyone to know about." She told them.

 

"Not even me…" Reid realized. This was insane, Becca had been in deeper trouble than he'd thought possible. Why hadn't she said anything? Why hadn't she asked for help while he could have still given it? He couldn't take it anymore, he left the office without a word, letting the door close loudly behind him.

 

"Excuse us," JJ said as she followed Reid out.

 

He was pacing back and forth along the stretch of hallway between Amanda's office and the one next door.

 

"Spence?"

 

"If I ever see that creep again you're going to have to keep me away from him." He told her, more as a statement of fact, than a threat.

 

"Reid, you told me that she never would have slept with him, and she didn't, not willingly anyway. If he did hurt her, we can prove it. We can track him down, we can prove with DNA that he fathered Rebecca's daughter."

 

"No. No, we can't… we can't even let him know that she exists. JJ if he is the father, then he would have parental rights over her. If we're right, and anyone else finds out, the only way we could stop the courts from giving him custody is if we got him locked up."

 

"You don't think he'd be convicted?"

 

"No. Becca's dead, she can't testify. All matching his DNA to her baby would prove is that he had sex with her. The assault was months ago. Any injuries she sustained, as a result, would've healed by now and any drugs he may or may not have used would be long out of her system. There'd be no hard evidence that it wasn't consensual. The restraining order could be used to show that Becca was afraid of him, but a good defense attorney could defeat that argument pretty easily in court. Garcia didn't find any evidence that Becca reported the assault, but, as far as I knew she wasn't afraid of him, so why not admit that he hurt her? Why take out a restraining order? The only reason the Becca I know would have let him get away with something like that would be to protect her baby, to make sure that he never knew she existed. I think our best shot at keeping that little girl safe is to make sure it stays that way."

 

"Ok… but that's not the only thing that's bugging you is it?"

 

"No, it's what Amanda told us about the last few months before Becca resigned, that combined with her letting saying that she knew she was dying makes me think there's still something we're missing."

 

"Do you have any idea what?"

 

"A few, none of them good. From sounds of it, her life was one nightmare after another for almost a year, but she never said a word. Why didn't she come to me? I would've helped her."

 

"I don't know, Spence. What I do know is that you're helping her now."


	5. Troubled Waters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Rebecca's autopsy finally complete and confirmation that she did make some formal arrangements before she died, Reid and JJ are 1 step closer to finding out the truth. Meanwhile, just two hours away, the BAU is hot on the trail of a sexual predator.

Chapter 5: Troubled Waters

 

JJ and Reid were still out in the hallway outside of Amanda Chamber’s office when JJ’s phone rang.

 

“It’s Garcia…” She said as she answered it. “You’re on speaker Penelope.”

 

“Ok, good news Boy Wonder, JJ asked me to look into the possibility of your girl leaving behind a will, and indeed she did, and even better, Rebecca did name Reid as the guardian of her daughter. It also leaves the money she made from selling her paintings on the online gallery to her daughter in the form of a college fund or at least the beginnings of one. However, you need the original notarized hard copy for this to be in any way helpful.”

 

“Thanks, Garcia,” Reid replied.

 

“Anytime my fine feathered friends.” She said before hanging up.

 

“Well, at least now we know that Becca did set up something official that can help me get custody.”

 

“Do you have any idea where she might have kept the original?” JJ asked.

 

“I don’t know, her apartment maybe?” Reid suggested.

 

That’s when JJ’s phone started ringing again. She stepped a few feet away to answer it, while Reid watched for a few agonizing minutes, trying and failing to overhear the conversation.

 

“That was the ME.” She said when she returned. “They’re ready for us.”

 

***

 

Meanwhile, the rest of the BAU was working a triple murder two hours north. Emily and Matt had gone to the local PD to set up and were now staring dumbfounded at the evidence they had yet to connect.

 

“This guy definitely has a type. These victims could all be sisters.” Matt said to no one in particular.

 

“It’s more than that, it’s like they're surrogates for someone. Either someone who rejected his advances or someone he lost.” Emily added. “Which would mean that the key to finding him is figuring out who that is.”

 

“That’s easier said than done when we don’t even have solid IDs on the three victims he’s killed so far.”

 

That’s when Garcia appeared on the laptop sitting on the table. “Your wish is my command dear Simmons,” she replied.

 

“Hey Penelope, you found them?”

 

“I did indeed. After combing missing person’s reports for Beatty Nevada I figured out that our first victim is April Jackson, twenty-nine, single, reported missing by a co-worker a week and a half ago when she never showed for a dinner shift. Next, our second victim is Mai Lin she was reported missing four days ago by her mother when she never came home from a night class at a local high school. She was teaching English to recent immigrants from China. Our third and final victim is Gloria Matthews who vanished right in the middle of girls’ night this past Friday. Her friends said that at first, they thought she’d run off with some guy but when she still hadn’t turned up by Sunday they knew something was up. She’s the one police found this morning.”

 

“So, none of these women were particularly high risk.” Matt realized.

 

“I’ll have the detectives bring in the friends who reported Gloria missing,” Prentiss added. “There might be something about what happened before they realized she was gone that could be helpful.”

 

***

 

Within the hour, Gloria’s three friends, Katie, Alexa, and Cameron had arrived at the station. Emily decided to have Tara interview Katie, while Matt talked to Alexa, and she talked to Cameron.

 

Cameron was sitting on a bench in a secluded part of the police station. Emily sat down next to her. “Cameron, I’m Agent Prentiss from the FBI, thank you for coming in.”

 

“W-why does the FBI want to know about Gloria?” Cameron replied as her voice shook and tears streamed down her cheeks.

 

“It appears that her death is connected to the deaths of at least two other women in the last few weeks. So far, all the victims were taken in seclusion, in areas and at times where it was unlikely that anyone would’ve noticed them being taken; but with Gloria, whoever did this upped his game. He took her while she was out with you and your other friends, so it’s possible that you, or one of the others, witnessed something that night that could help us find him before he hurts anyone else. In order to find that out, I’m going to need you to answer some questions.”

 

“Ok, like what?”

 

“Was there anyone there that night who paid her unwanted attention?” Emily asked. “Someone who made her uncomfortable or didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer?”

 

“Yeah… yeah, there was. I wanted to dance, but Gloria said she didn’t want to dance until she had at least one drink. So we went over to the bar and ordered a couple of margaritas. There was this guy, he was blonde and his hair was really short, almost like a military haircut. He started flirting with her and kept going for a couple of hours. Gloria seemed into it at first but then he started saying how she reminded him of his ex-girlfriend. Gloria thought he was just, you know, using her as a rebound… so she started blowing him off. She got up to go to the bathroom and I was worried that he would follow her so I went too. I didn’t want her to be alone with him.”

 

“Did he follow you?” Emily asked.

 

“No, in fact, he was gone when we came back; but there was a brand new margarita sitting on the bar in front of Gloria’s chair. She usually knows better than that, but she drank it before I could say anything to her. She got up to dance, I lost track of her…” Cameron paused, close to tears, “and that was the last time I saw her.”


	6. Becca's Choice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reid and JJ finally learn the details of Rebecca's Cause of Death

Chapter 6: Becca’s Choice

 

After leaving the university, Spencer and JJ went to ME’s office to see Rebecca’s body and find out what the ME had been able to determine how she died. Inside the morgue, they found doctor Tanya Kleinman waiting for them. The morgue itself was sterile and cold. With white walls and stainless steel equipment, but the doctor was anything but. She was a short woman with dark, reddish, brown hair and glasses and a pair of pink scrubs under her blue lab coat

 

“Greetings, so you’re both here to see the body of Rebecca Thompson, are you?”

 

“Yes Ma’am,” JJ replied, “I’m Agent Jareau, and this is Dr. Spencer Reid. He’s an old friend of hers.”

 

Dr. Kleinman frowned and turned to Reid. “I’m sorry for your loss.” 

 

“Thanks.” He replied, but he wasn’t really listening. He was already focused on the sheet-covered body on the table in front of them, preparing himself to see what was underneath. “Did you ever figure out how she died?” He asked.

 

At hearing his question, JJ instinctively loved closer. His voice was higher than usual, the way it sounded when he was about to cry.

 

“I did.” The ME replied. “Are you sure you want to see her?” She asked.

 

“Spence, you don’t have to do this. You don’t have to see what’s beneath that sheet, you can hold on to the image you have of Rebecca as she was.” JJ reminded him.

 

“JJ, I need to know. I need to understand what happened to her.” He said, his voice firmer and deeper now.

 

He turned to the ME and nodded.

 

Dr. Kleinman pulled back the sheet to reveal Rebecca’s head. Her eyes were closed, her face expressionless, and on her forehead was a dark bruise roughly the size of a golf ball. “That bruise on her forehead is what ended her life. It probably occurred when she fell on the steps of that church, but I had initially ruled it out because under normal circumstances it wouldn’t have been severe enough to cause death.”

 

“What do you mean?” Reid asked.

 

“When I examined her brain, I found that there was massive bleeding and internal damage that was much more severe and widespread than a head injury like that would normally produce. I didn’t understand what caused it until I ran more tests.” She replied. “Notice the discoloration on her face, those blotchy, purple areas?”

 

“Isn’t that part of normal decomposition though?” JJ asked.

 

“It is, but she arrived here way too soon for that and her skin looked the same the moment she got here. It’s not just on her face either, she has this discoloration all over her body.” She replied, taking out one of Rebecca’s arms from under the sheet and showing them. “I ran some tests to find out what was causing it, first a basic blood panel, cell counts, things like that. Her toxicology report was clean, but her blood counts were a mess, all of them were extremely low. This young lady was very, very sick long before she went into that church. I ran more detailed tests to find out why.”

 

Reid gulped, that was exactly what he’d been afraid of. “What did those tests show?” He asked.

 

“She had cancer, severe AML Leukemia specifically, and I found no evidence that she ever sought treatment. There’s no trace of any chemo drugs in her system or any indication that her body had ever been exposed to them or radiation.”

 

“I don’t get it if she knew she was sick, why wouldn’t she get treatment? JJ wondered out loud.

 

Reid was still staring intently at Rebecca’s face, thinking through everything she’d ever said to him, everything he’d ever known her to have done, all through the mind of a profiler, and once he did that, he knew the answer.

 

“The baby.” He said. “Remember what Amanda told us? That Rebecca started bruising easily more than a month _after_ she found out she was pregnant. She’d already made up her mind to bring the baby to term, a human embryo or fetus is, by definition, a collection of fast-dividing cells. If she’d gone on chemotherapy like she would’ve needed to, she would have miscarried. She chose her baby’s life over her own.”  

 

“Reid, are you sure?” JJ asked.

 

He nodded. “It’s the only explanation that makes sense. Becca would never just give up on herself like this, but she would put someone else’s needs, especially those of her child, before her own. Dr. Kleinman, how long would it take for this kind of leukemia to kill her without treatment?”

 

“A case this severe? Well, I’m not an oncologist but based on other cases I’ve seen over the years, by the time she knew what was happening she probably had no more than six months. The head wound killed her because of how thin her blood had become, it caused a massive brain hemorrhage; but frankly, I’m amazed she even made it to that church. She would have been pretty weak, especially since my exam showed she gave birth no more than forty-eight hours prior to her death.”

 

“So she’s pregnant, she finds out that she’s sick, decides to forgo treatment to protect her child, knowing the consequences, so she makes a plan to make sure the baby will be taken care of after she’s gone… but then, if her plan was for you to become her baby’s guardian, why didn’t she tell you about any of this?” JJ asked.

 

“I’m pretty sure I know why,” Reid replied, as a lump caught in his throat.

 

JJ couldn’t help but notice that his hands were shaking as he said those words.

 

He stepped forward and ran his hand gently through her shoulder-length, inky black hair as a few tears ran down his face. “Becca, you didn’t have to do this alone. I would’ve been there for you. All you had to do was ask, I would’ve…no I wouldn’t have understood… but I’d have tried to. I’ll make sure you didn’t do all this for nothing. I will take care of her, I promise.” He whispered, barely keep it together.

 

“Spence…” JJ said.

 

At her words, he lost it. Reid turned, embraced JJ, and sobbed.


	7. The Decision

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set over a week earlier, as Becca cradles her newborn daughter, she contemplates what she has to do next and recalls memories from her childhood of the moments she shared with Spencer that formed the tight bond between them

Chapter 7: The Decision

 

When I woke up to the sound of my newborn daughter crying and realized that I’d been asleep since I last fed her, almost three hours earlier, I knew I was running seriously low on time. I dragged myself off my mattress and over to the pink bassinet I’d bought at a garage sale a few weeks earlier. She was tiny, with soft, flawless, alabaster skin, adorable round cheeks, and a thick mop of black hair as dark as ink, and as thick and silky as my own. She looked a _lot_ like me, even at only a day old.

 

“Hold on, Sweetheart, I know you’re hungry. I’ll feed you in just a minute.” I told her softly.

 

I sat down in an old wooden rocking chair next to the bassinet before daring to pick her up. I was so weak that holding her and standing up at the same time without help was a risky venture. So, I took her into my arms, sat her up on my lap, and supported her tiny head with one hand as her mouth instinctively found the nipple of my right breast and began to suck. I hadn’t named her yet, so I called her by various terms of endearment instead, _Sweetie, Sweetheart, My Darling…_ things like that; because she wasn’t mine. I knew my body wouldn’t allow me to stay in this world long enough to raise her, and that the best I could do was to ensure that she would be safe even after my life ended, and I wanted the friend I’d chosen to raise her, to be the one to name her.

 

Sitting there, holding her, I grimaced at the thought of the bruises I knew even the weight of her tiny body would leave on my legs. I glanced over to the corner opposite my bed, where a portable oxygen tank with tubes that could be connected either to a nasal cannula or a face mask, depending on just how desperately I needed the help at any given time, sat in a wheeled, backpack-like setup on the floor between the window and my dresser. On top of the dresser sat a bunch of pill bottles, most were vitamins and supplements, immune supports, prenatal vitamins, women’s multi-vitamins, those sorts of things. Since being told that unless I sacrificed my daughter for chemo and radiation I would only have six months, I’d accepted all the medical help I could get, except the kind that might actually save my life. It wasn’t about me anymore. Everything I could do to stay as strong as possible, as healthy as possible, long enough to bring her to term, long enough to give birth, I did. The leukemia that was not-so-slowly killing me might, and almost certainly would, take my life, but I wasn’t about to let it take hers.

 

As she finished feeding, she started to cry, wanting some time with me that didn’t center on food. I bit my lip as tears ran down my cheeks, knowing that all too soon I’d have to set the next phase of my plan into motion. “Don’t worry Sweetie, soon you’ll have a Daddy, a strong, kind Daddy, one who will take good care of you and love you as much as I do,” I told her, praying that she’d somehow, miraculously understand.

 

My phone buzzed in my pocket, I took it out with my one free hand to see the familiar face of my best friend filling the caller-ID screen. _Speak of the devil…_ I thought to myself as I waited for the call to go to voicemail. I didn’t want him to think I was avoiding him, but I couldn’t tell him about her, about my illness, about what had led to her existence in the first place, about any of it, not yet. I knew that what was about to happen would hurt him and I didn’t want to prolong his suffering, or give him a false sense of hope, let him think, even for a second, that there was a way to fix this, to save me. I couldn’t do that to him. I bit my lip as memories of our time together flooded my brain…

 

1988

 

_Spencer and I had known each other since I was four and he was almost seven. That was the very first time my Mom had gone crazy at me. I had been laying on my stomach on the wooden floor of our living room, painting when she came down the stairs in a rage. She kicked the tray of watercolors against the wall under the window, the red splashing on my denim jumper as it whizzed by. Then she’d blamed me as though I had done it, and my punishment was being lifted into the hair, her grip so tight around my arms it almost cut off circulation, as she shook me and screamed at me about the awful thing I had supposedly done. When she finally let go, she dropped me then went back upstairs, leaving me on the floor cowering and sobbing. When I realized she was gone, I ran downstairs, through our family restaurant, out the front door, and down the street. For a while I just wandered, not really caring where I was going as long as it was away from there. Then, I literally ran into someone, knocking both of us to the ground. When I looked up, I saw a boy, no more than two or three years older than I was, fumbling around on the sidewalk like he couldn’t see. Then I saw a pair of round, thick-rimmed glasses laying in the dirt a few feet away. I walked over to pick them up, cleaned them off using the clean part of the hem of my jumper, and gave them back._

_“Sorry, I didn’t mean to ram into you like that,” I told him as he put the glasses back on and looked up at me._

_“Who are you?” He asked, eyeing the splattered red paint from earlier._

_“My name’s Becca. What’s yours?”_

_“Spencer. Hey, do you want to go to the park or something? You’re out here all by yourself and you’re even younger than me.”_

_I nodded in relief. I had half expected him to grill me about why there was paint on my dress and a gaping tear in my tights, but he didn’t. Instead, he seemed to want to play with me, and I wanted nothing more at that moment than to go to the playground with him, to have fun like a normal kid, far away from my mom and what she’d just done._

 

1991

 

_Our friendship had only just begun that day in 1988. Over the months and years that followed we discovered that we had a lot in common that most people would simply never understand. One evening, when I was six and Spencer was nine, he came into our restaurant with his parents. Occasionally, when his mom felt stable enough to handle it, they’d come just after we opened for dinner before it got busy._

_On that particular night though, he walked in to see my mom with her hands around my throat, choking me. His mom and dad stood there utterly dumbfounded, barely comprehending what they were seeing. Spencer, however, sprung into swift and decisive action, throwing himself, with the weight of his entire body, into my mother, knocking her down and forcing her to drop me. Then, as I knelt on the floor, coughing and sputtering, he stood, still as a statue, between me and her. His arms were outstretched, his stance wide and firm, brown eyes glaring at her with an iciness I never saw in them before or since._

_“Why you little brat…” She hissed._

_“Leave her alone!” He spat back, his voice hard as stone. Then he grabbed my hand and pulled me toward his own parents. “Come on Becca, we’re leaving. You’re coming home with us.” He said. It wasn’t an order, it was more like a declaration. I half expected his parents to stop him, to force me to stay there, with my own family, with my mother, but they didn’t._

_“I think that’s a good idea.” His dad agreed, then turning to me, he said: “Becca, go get some PJs, we’ll wait.”_

_I ran up the two flights of stairs to my room and yanked my favorite nightgown and some pajama pants out of my dresser drawer. When I came back down, Mr. Reid was eyeing my parents watchfully, warning my mother not to come any closer to either Spencer or me. Then we left. We got burgers and milkshakes from the diner down the street instead of my Dad’s food. Then we went back to Spencer’s house. Around nine o’clock or so, we found ourselves in his parents’ bed, lounging against the pillows on either side of his mother as she read to us from some book I don’t remember the title of anymore. When she finished, it was time for bed, and being the gentleman that he is, even back then, Spencer gave me his room while he slept out on the sofa in the living room. That was the first night in almost three years that I truly felt safe, safe enough to really relax, to let my guard down and fall asleep without fear making my mom the monster of my nightmares._

_Mr. Reid had reported the incident he’d witnessed between my mom and me, and CPS had investigated, but somehow Dad made it go away, and I was forced to continue living with my parents, in the apartment above the restaurant._

_December 1993_

_I would return the favor a little over two years later when he was twelve and I was not quite ten. He was a child prodigy, an academic genius capable of high school work while still at a grade school age. One afternoon, I waited and waited for him to walk to my place on his way home and pick up supper for himself and his mom, as he usually did on Friday nights, but he never came. Hours passed and as they ticked by, a sense of dread grew within me. I knew something was up, I just didn’t know what. Finally, with mom upstairs and dad busy making food for hungry customers, I snuck out into the dim light of the chilly Last Vegas night. It never got really dark here, even in the middle of the night, it was bright enough to be what, in most other places would count as twilight. I made my way to Las Vegas East High, knowing that was the last place where I knew for sure he’d been._

_It wasn’t until I made my way around to the practice field that I saw him, tied to a goal post, naked. I ran up to him as fast as my legs would carry me and immediately started fingering out the knots in the rope that bound him there._

_“Becca? What are you doing here? How did you find me?” He asked._

_Even in the dim light, I could tell that he was mortified that I had been the one to discover him, that I was seeing him like this; but I didn’t care. Once he was freed, I slipped the massively oversized hoody I was wearing, a big, comfortable red one that came down almost to my ankles and covered my hands in its sleeves by several inches. I gave it to him to put on, so he wouldn’t have to walk home like that._

_Someone else might have questioned why his mother wasn’t out looking for him, or why no police had been called, given how long he must have been MIA and how late it was getting, but I knew the answer. It was more than likely Mrs. Reid was in a near catatonic state and may not have even noticed that her son had yet to reappear. I followed him until we got to his front door. All the lights were off except for a floor lamp in the corner of the living room, next to his mother’s favorite chair, the warm yellow glow visible through the curtains. I was right. Clumsily, he removed the spare house key from inside a ceramic frog near the doorway, turned the lock, and went inside, whispering a ‘thank you’ and promising to wash and return my sweatshirt within the week. Then I turned and started marching down the street back the way we had come, back to my own house, shivering in my short-sleeved polo and rubbing my hands against my arms as I went. Deserts weren’t always as warm as people tended to think, not that time of year, and especially not that late at night._

Present Day

 

My thoughts suddenly returned to the here and now and I peered down at the tiny infant in my arms. Yes, Spencer was the perfect person to take care of her, the only one I could trust to safeguard one of the few good things in my life besides Spencer himself.

 

My phone started buzzing again, and once more, an old photo of him filled my screen. This time I hit ‘accept’. I couldn’t avoid him for long or he would definitely know something was wrong.

 

“Hi…” I said.

 

“Hey, how are things going? It’s been awhile…”

 

“Fine…” I lied.

 

“You sure Becca? You sound tired, are you ok?”

 

“I’m fine, Spencer, it’s just,” I paused, hesitating just for an instant, I had to choose my next words very carefully, “been a really long day…”


End file.
